This week I received the Hilton Cards that I applied for in order to gain Hilton Honors Gold and access to AXON awards for discounted hotel stays. In total we received 3 cards, 2 fee free Hilton by American Express and 1 Citi Hilton Reserve Visa by Citibank.
The signup haul for this is:
- 2x 40,000 Hilton Honors points (upon meeting minimum spend of $750 per card)
- 2x Free Weekend Nights at (almost) any Hilton property, including Waldorf Astoria Brands.
As I sit drinking my Sunday morning cuppa I’ll meet the spends on the 2 Amex cards; these cards will never leave my drawer after today, unless they are requested by the Hilton Diamond Desk when booking an AXON on the phone. With no annual fee just owning the cards will never cost me anything and will open up access to discounted stays. I like to bang out minimum spend immediately, and always pay off in full. Here is how I’ll do it:
Sign into Bigcrumbs.com – if you don’t have an account please use my signup link (I get a small referral fee for this) Here is my link Bigcrumbs Free Signup
Once you have signed in or signed up search for American Express using their search tool.
You will receive two options here – make sure you select Personal (the second option in my screenshot above) Amex kicks back orders used with Personal Cards on their Business Site, even though the product looks the same.
The Cash Back for American Express Gift Cards is currently 1.4%, so my buying this gift card is going to both net me 4,3000 HHonors points (40K bonus plus 3x points) and also $14 in cash back! I’m opting to buying a $1,000 Gift Card even though I only need to spend $750 as Amex offers a$700 or a $1000 option (no $750) and I want this done and forgotten about in one transaction.
There is a fee to buy the card of $3.95 which cuts into my $14 cash, now I am down to $10.05.
The next charge we face is Shipping, they have 2 options to consider, one is $5.95 ground, and one is $8.95 2nd day (there is an overnight too.. for even more) American Express makes you pick the 2nd Day Air once you purchase over a certain value of card, which adds cost to the shipping and but also means it is a lot faster to reach you. The good thing is that there is a code you can enter to remove the shipping, it is supposed to apply only to ground, but I entered it anyway and it gave me $5.95 discounted from the total price as you’ll see below.
No Fee Gift Card Waiver Codes
Normally, there is a $3.95 purchases fee with American Express gift cards. However, use the following codes to waive your Amex gift card fee from below:
- ADMINDAYVM– valid through 5/31/13
- ADMINGIFT6– valid through 5/31/13
- EMTHANK1– valid through 4/30/13
- EMTHANK2– valid through 4/30/13
- EMHEARTVM– valid through 4/1/13
Free Shipping Waiver Codes:
Free standard shipping($5.95 savings)
- ADMIN2013 – valid through 5/1/2013
Source HustlemoneyBlog -HT The Frequent Miler
- Total Order Cost $,1006.95
- Total Haul 43,020 HHonors Points and a Net Profit of $7.05
Update – I now use this process for CASH BACK cards instead- since Hilton Devalued their Program and I started to reconsider earning points instead of taking cold..hard.. cash!
I repeated the process for Mrs Saverocity, paid off both cards in full today, and once the cards arrive will liquidate them immediately using a method from this post on Four Ways to Liquidate Gift Cards
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